GS: You may not be able to answer this question, but who do
you think will come out on top in the next generation, in terms of
console?

TM: Yeah, I want to know that too.

GS: Any company you’re hoping for?

TM: In next gen? Not especially.

GS: So back to companies losing all their talent, when I talked to Masaya Matsuura recently [see ‘Parappa’s Papa’ in the August issue of Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine],
he said that game companies couldn’t hold on to their talent because a
lack of “something.” What do you think that something is? What are they
lacking?

TM: It’s really difficult to
answer. I don’t know about everyone, but from just my case, I felt like
I didn’t have freedom. I was in Sega. At the time, I don’t know now,
but at the time, that was a big client for me, and I had a studio
called UGA, United Game Artists. And I had seventy people. I had many
visions, like to make casual games. Not big stuff, but small games. Not
Lumines, but many other ideas. If I made a presentation to
Sega executives about this kind of thing, and if they said no, that’s
over. That’s it.

But beyond Sega, looking beyond
where I was, there were many, many possibilities in the world. Not only
game console, but also mobile, and other markets that exist. I wanted
to make a new phenomenon, not only traditional games. So I felt this
was the limit. But I don’t know what other people were thinking about.

Lumines

GS:
Was it difficult to get funding for your new company? It seems like
there are fewer revenue streams for starting new companies in Japan.

TM:
I founded Q Entertainment with a few people, on our own. We started
very small, with a small number of people. We had no office, and we had
meetings at a karaoke box.

KY: I just found out that the Lumines concept was actually started at a karaoke box!

TM: Nobody sang!

KY: They had no money to rent office space, so that’s why.

TM: Yeah, because we can watch visuals, we can make sounds, that’s ok.

KY: They brought demos of Lumines
on their laptops, each of them brought their ideas into the Karaoke box
and then had music playing in the background, and tried to match the
images on their screens to the music.

TM: Anyway,
so that was a very slow, small start. I learned a lot from the Sega
era. I was the head of UGA, and I didn’t want to manage people, or
manage a company. Creativity and management skills were kind of like
accelerator and brake pedals. This wasn’t healthy. So I wanted to focus
on creativity, so my partner Shuji, is really good. He’s got really
good management skill, and business. So I think it’s really good now. I
think that within game developers, some people try to manage their
company also. That’s really not good.